MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to punish Iran for a missile assault on Israel last night.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Iran fired about 180 missiles, according to the Israeli military, sending millions of people across Israel into bomb shelters.
MARTIN: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi is with us now from Tel Aviv. Hadeel, good morning.
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So what was it like last night?
AL-SHALCHI: So it really all started around 5 p.m. local time. We had heard through the news that the U.S. warned Israel about an imminent Iranian threat. And then, very quickly after the Israeli military confirmed that news, the streets here in Tel Aviv fell eerily quiet. And then, a couple of hours later, this is what it sounded like. Air raid sirens wailed across the country.
(SOUNDBITE OF AIR RAID SIRENS)
AL-SHALCHI: And then we heard loud booms in the night sky, lit up with orbs of light, many of which exploded into smoke. And that was, of course, the work of Israel's powerful air defense system blowing up the missiles before they hit the earth. Luckily, in Israel, we have many bomb shelters across the cities and inside homes now, so many people were able to take shelter. And while the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza weren't the targets of this attack, the vast majority of Palestinians in those areas don't have specialized shelters, and the one confirmed death was in the West Bank.
MARTIN: So Hadeel, you know, in the last few weeks, we've been saying tensions are rising in the Middle East. We keep saying that over and over again, but this sounds like a major escalation. Why don't you remind us of how we got here?
AL-SHALCHI: For sure. So I'm going to take you all the way back to October 8. That's really when it started. Hezbollah began trading fire with Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border, but then it got really bad a couple of weeks ago. Israel unleashed a much larger campaign on Lebanon. And that included a pager and walkie-talkie explosion operation, and then airstrikes on Beirut that killed more than 1,000 people - including the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, which was a huge blow not only to the group, but also its funder, Iran. So Iran claimed that yesterday's missile attack was in response to that assassination. And if you go even earlier this year, in April, an Israeli strike killed several leaders of Iran's military in Syria. So Iran attacked Israel then, also, with more than 300 drones and missiles, but almost all of those were intercepted.
MARTIN: So what have we heard from Israeli and American officials so far?
AL-SHALCHI: Right. So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out and spoke last night, and he had a stern warning for his neighbors.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: (Speaking Hebrew).
AL-SHALCHI: "Whoever attacks, we will attack them," Netanyahu said. And then he went on to name Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the West Bank. He also thanked the U.S. for its support. American naval destroyers had shot down missiles with Israel. And then President Biden also spoke later, reiterating the U.S.'s commitment to its ally.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Make no mistake - the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.
AL-SHALCHI: Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, also spoke. And he said that the U.S. made it clear that, quote, "there will be consequences - severe consequences - for this attack." And he said that the U.S. will work with Israel to make that the case.
MARTIN: What might we expect next?
AL-SHALCHI: So there's been a lot of rhetoric from all sides. Yesterday, Iranian Mission to the United Nations said its action were, quote, "duly carried out." But then it said that if Israel retaliated, there would be a, quote, "crushing response." And we seem to be in spiral of escalation. And I don't want to speculate too much here, but it seems like we're getting closer to that wider regional war we've been talking about for about a year.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi. Hadeel, thank you.
AL-SHALCHI: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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